White Shadows in the South Seas eBook

“I have everything I want; I grow it or I make
it. My horses and cattle roam the hills; if I
want meat, beef or goat or pig, I go or I send a man
to kill an animal and bring it to me. Fish are
in the river and the bay; there is honey in the hives;
fruit and vegetables in the garden, wood for my furniture,
bark for the tanning of hides. I cure the leather
for saddles or chair-seats with the bark of the rose-wood.
Do you know why it is called rose-wood? I will
show you. Its bark has the odor of roses when
freshly cut. Yes, I have all that I want.
What do I need from the great cities?”

He tamped down the tobacco in his pipe and puffed
it meditatively.

“A man lives only a little while, hein?
He should ask himself what he wants from life.
He should look at the world as it is. These traders
want money, buying and selling and cheating to get
it. What is money compared to life? Their
life goes in buying and selling and cheating.
Life is made to be lived pleasantly. Me, I do
what I want to do with mine, and I do it in a pleasant
place.”

His pipe went out while he gazed at the garden murmurous
in the twilight. He knocked out the dottle, refilled
the bowl and lighted the tobacco.

“You should have seen this island when I came.
These natives die too fast. Ah, if I could only
get labor, I could make this valley produce enough
for ten thousand people. I could load the ships
with copra and cotton and coffee.”

He was twenty-two years and many thousands of miles
from the great cities of Europe, but he voiced the
wail of the successful man the world over. If
he could get labor, he could turn it into building
his dreams to reality, into filling his ships with
his goods for his profit. But he had not the
labor, for the fruits of a commercial civilization
had killed the islanders who had had their own dreams,
their own ships, and their own pleasures and profits
in life.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Labor in the South Seas; some random thoughts on the “survival of the
fittest.”

“I pictured myself cultivating many hundreds
of acres when I first came here,” said Grelet.
“I laid out several plantations, and once shipped
much coffee, as good, too, as any in the world.
I gather enough now for my own use, and sell none.
I grew cotton and cocoanuts on a large scale.
I raise only a little now.

“There were hundreds of able-bodied men here
then. I used to buy opium from the Chinese labor-contractors
and from smugglers, and give it to my working people.
A pill once a day would make the Marquesans hustle.
But the government stopped it. They say that the
book written by the Englishman, Stevenson, did it.
We must find labor elsewhere soon, Chinese, perhaps.
Those two Paumotans brought by Begole are a godsend
to me. I wish some one would bring me a hundred.”